Heroes of the future: Sustainability Champions!

Our world is in crisis territory. For those of you who missed it, I spoke about this in depth in my Transcendent Development video.

Our civilisation will reach its end if we do not do something soon to stop all the negative social, environmental and economic effects of our current way of operating. We need a sustainable world more than we need an intelligent one. What is the use of science, technology and all the weird and wonderful things that are supposed to make our lives better if we’re not going to be here to enjoy them?

Description: image of Johannesburg City from the 39th floor of a large state-owned company.

In the pictures above, you see my view of Johannesburg city from the 39th floor of a leading mega-company on the African continent. It employs well over 50,000 employees and is worth billions in assets and revenue! I’ve been coming to this company to complete my Masters Research. My dissertation entitled Strategising Practices of Sustainability Champions seeks to find out how sustainability champions are going about transforming a huge organisation with several operating divisions towards becoming a sustainable corporate citizen. This is no easy task. They are faced with many challenges and have to keep innovating to make sure that corporate sustainability becomes the new reality of the company. They are misunderstood, referred to as “tree hugging greenies” and must remain resilient in the face of organisational barriers and limitations – they are the heroes of our future.

I claim that going forward we need a new kind of society, a society made of these sustainability champions in families, communities, organisations across all sectors of society. These are people who will lead us into a sustainable future for everyone one on our planet. A planet that coming generations can enjoy just as much as we have. That’s why I’m studying some of the best sustainability champions I can find so I can figure out how they influence the overall direction of a mega organisation buy embedding sustainability in its strategy and every day activities.

Why is this so important?

Think about it – if 100 Sustainability Champions can influence the strategy which directs 55,000 employees within an organisation (a ratio of 2:1000) on which an entire nation’s economy depends, then that means, all else being equal, that we would only need 15 million human beings to be sustainability champions in order to influence the direction of the rest of the 7.3 billion people currently on this planet. Amazing isn’t it?

This is a matter of global leadership because it’s good leadership that we need, not just any leadership; sustainable leadership.

Who are the best candidates for that job?

The courageous carer’s of the world – sustainability champions. It is vitally important that we study, analyse and know not only what they do, but also how they do what they do so that each one of us, in our own way, big or small, can make a difference and leave a legacy that our children, their children and their children’s children can enjoy!